Dr. Abubakar is the Chair of Lancet Migration, the Lancet Nigeria Commission, the NIHR Global Professorship Panel and is a member of the Global Preparedness Monitoring Board. In addition, he chaired and the Wellcome Trust Discovery Advisory Committee on Population Health and served on the Public Health Board of the Open Society Foundation, the MRC Global Health Board and as a Scientific Adviser to the UK House of Lords Science of COVID-19 Review. Until July 2021, he was the Director of the UCL Institute for Global Health.
Dr. Abubakar qualified in Medicine from Ahmadu Bello University Zaria, and gained an MSc from the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, a Diploma in Public Health from the University of Cambridge, and a PhD from the University of East Anglia. He is a Fellow of the UK Academy of Medical Sciences and a UK NIHR Senior Investigator.